Three catalytic frameworks, one engineering logic: Bottlenecks and design levers in pesticide-degrading hydrolases.

Microbial pesticide-degrading hydrolases can be engineered using a shared logic across three catalytic frameworks, where conserved catalytic cores constrain chemistry while peripheral elements enable tuning.

• Why it matters: Pesticide residues and transformation products persist in soils and aquatic environments, creating ecological and human health risks, and hydrolysis is a key initiating step in microbial biotransformation.
• What they did: This review organizes evidence and case studies for serine hydrolases (ABH fold), serine amidases (AS family), and metal-dependent hydrolases (amidohydrolase TIM-barrel and MBL superfamilies), emphasizing conserved core components versus malleable peripheral determinants.
• The result: It maps engineering levers—active-site gating, substrate-binding pockets, outer-shell networks, and substrate access channels—and links them to evolutionary analysis, rational/semi-rational design, directed evolution, and computation/data-driven tools for improved interpretability and translational potential.

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